I am not refuting it. I am simply providing justification as to why I did them. I am considering yours and all comments. It is just tough to decide what to do. I do not see many recurring suggestions.
Van, there’s a difference between what you would want hiring managers to care about ideally and what they care about in reality. It doesn’t mean that your other accomplishments aren’t worth anything, it just means that you need to tailor your pitch for your audience.
Most of us that have been commenting in here have been around the block a few times with the process of getting real jobs in the industry, so I think we know a few things about how to tailor that pitch.
I used to be a lot like you, actually – I felt that brute force and raw ambition were all I could rely on. The fact is, over time, I realized that I could get a lot more done by putting my ego and (admittedly) sometimes abrasive personality on the shelf and just going with what peers/coworkers were saying. It doesn’t mean you need to dilute your personality, it just means you have to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing for as long as it takes for you to gain enough credibility and traction in the workplace, until the time where you can gradually stretch your legs and let your true colors come out.
But as awesome as you are, that just ain’t gonna happen unless you can hold your nose and drink the Kool-Aid for a little while, my friend.
^ I cannot really improve upon lxwarr, rawraw and isthereany’s comments when taken as a whole. All of these are sound bits of advice for cleaning up your resume.
Perhaps a most important observation is that it isn’t entirely clear from looking at your resume what exactly you are looking to do (asset management? corporate finance? etc.). I understand that the cover letter helps for this little bit, but if this resume you’ve shown is hanging out on job boards as is, there is no cover letter to pair it with. In less than 10 seconds, people will judge this resume (I know, I know – it sucks! But this is how it is and you must adapt).
My solitary piece of advice would be to use some of the space you saved cleaning up superfluous content in this resume (as competently advised by other posters) as an “Objectives” section (some on this forum, I’m sure, will disagree with me on this, but I have had success with this approach). You can also title the section “Summary” if you like, but don’t get fancy. This section should come first, and be no more than 5 concise sentences describing:
Your situation: “Graduate student seeking entry-level position doing X.” Here, stay away from nonsense fillers like “hard-working,” “ambitious,” “diligent,” “passionate,” or any other adjective about how awesome you are. Stick to the facts and don’t window dress using bulls#!t filler language. I have tossed resumes when asked for my opinion before based on these fillers alone.
Your skillset: The next sentences should matter-of-factly describe what you can bring to the table, again, in a very non-embellished way, and should absolutely be tailored to the job you want. You “know Bloomberg?” Big deal. Address specific functions and capabilities of Bloomberg that you can use relevant to the job you are applying for. Fixed income jobs will require very different approaches from equity jobs, etc. I leave this to you to come up with the language, but I stress, leave your ego on the table, get a tad bit technical, but not TOO technical, in this section. The reader should come away knowing that you have not generically sprayed a list of skills out there without targeting what you can bring to the table – it looks lazy, not impressive.
It’s easier. I made the 94th percentile with just my undergraduate finance/eco/accounting education knowledge with zero studying. I actually showed up 5 minutes late. Alot of my classmates at my hacksaw school had a little trouble though. It is similar to CFA level 1 in the sense it had probably 10-12 different sections covering different topics. It’s obviously much less serious than the CFA in the sense that theres much less proctoring, no passport required, etc etc. Much more relaxed. One could probably cheat if they wanted to. It only took probably 2-2.5 hours as well. They have a job thing on their website where employers can search you based on your score, and ive gotten about 8-12 companies to reach out to me for more information, but I never have enough work experience for what they are looking for.
I see this as a back and forth discussion where we swap ideas and discuss the best course of action. Not an iron fist decree where someone mentions something and I just do it
I’ll offer some advice, won through painful experience.
You ask for advice.
You get 4 suggestions. You disagree with all four. Or perhaps one of them is ok.
Find the suggestion you least disagree with and say “X is really helpful, thanks so much for pointing that out, I’m going to work on that.”
That’s all you need to do to make people feel it’s worth offering you advice. It also works pretty well when people are criticizing your work performance. You don’t have to agree 100%, they just want to see you respond as if what they said has some impact.
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Secondly, if you ask for advice, and large numbers of people are telling you the same thing, you might consider that they are on to something. If you feel that those people are unqualified to give you advice, then don’t ask for their advice.
Finally, if you don’t understand their perspective, and you want to say “I wrote it this way because…,” the elegant response is one that says “Interesting, I would have thought that X would have been better because?” That turns it into a conversation about the dynamics of the process, and not a conversation that says “I asked your advice and I don’t think what you said is valuable.”
I realize that at certain points, you did use this language, but by then you’d already established an antagonistic attitude towards your reviewers.
And - if you express your current attitude in your interviews - it likely won’t matter much if you have made it to the interview stage or not.
Anyway, I don’t expect you to like any of what I just said, but it is offered with your best interests at heart.
Go interview for Bridgewater. You’ll get dominated, but the interview style seems like more what you (say) you want. Most other shops will ding you for being absurdly antagonistic in your interview if you’re like that, though.
Those were actually some great points! Some of the best thoughts in this thread, thanks. I didnt know that people cared how I reacted to their advice, nor did I know how to properly word my response in order to facilitate discussion. Great post! thanks.
I think in order to be great, you must be different. You must disagree with the status quo. You must innovate and have new ideas. It seems to me that agreeing just makes you another cog in the machine and not a true business leader and innovator that adds value over any average candidate
When you are interviewing, the interviewer generally is evaluating three things:
Are you qualified for the job (at the interview stage, they are mostly testing to see if your skills match what is implied by your resume - if you are obviously not qualified, you won’t be interviewed, unless you have a networking connection)
Do you fit the culture of the firm. Mostly this is about whether people like you or would enjoy having you as a coworker, though in some hypercompetitive firms, it’s also about whether you’ll thrive under competition or hate it.
Do you want the job. Many people forget to say that they want to work there, feeling that it is obvious or assumed. If said sincerely it indicates that the person won’t need to be dragged in to do their assignments and will be happy to be there. Two equally competent candidates, one is really excited about the opportunity to come to work with you, one is blasé about life and wants assurances that they can always go home at 5pm - which one do you want on your team?
You often want to show that you’re an innovator, but you also want to show that you’re not going to disrupt the flow of work too much and cause more problems than you solve. This is particularly true in larger and longer-established firms. This is why cultural fit is important to the hiring process, and making sure that where there are disagreements, those disagreements are manageable. You should have innovative ideas, but beware of ideas that involve tearing up all exisiting processes and starting from scratch, unless a firm has specifically indicated that they want that. Most firms don’t.
I only recently began to understand number 3. I think in the few interviews I have had, I have not indicated in the slightest that I wanted to work there. I definitely planned to change that in future interviews. I had kind of taken a laid-back approach where I sit back and want them to impress me versus the other way around. I would act as if I wanted them to sell me on the company instead of saying I wanted to be there. So yes, ill be sure to do point 3.
Point 2 seems a little tougher. It is hard to really know the dynamics of the office culture and the personalities of those within it when you’re going in. I suppose all one can do is try to be as likable as possible. One thing along those lines that I have found myself debating on recently, is do I call the person I am interviewing with by Mr/Ms. XYZ or by their first name. I can see it both ways. Makes you seem more adult and confident to go with first name, but last name is more respectful, but perhaps subservient.
I used to do this when I was your age. HUGE mistake I learned from lost opportunities! And this was during an awesome time for the economy where employers were fighting over recent grads.
No matter the environment, check your ego at the door and express excitement and gratitude at the prospect of working for interviewer’s company. Don’t act as if you’re the Shite, and that they should be selling you. You won’t get call backs that way, no matter how awesome you think you are. I thought I was really awesome. Turns out, not so much.
I guess I have just been playing too much poker haha. I didnt want to reveal my hand and get low-ball salary offers, but I suppose I need to actually start actually receiving offers before I should start worrying about putting on some sort of coy poker face about maybe not taking the job and all that stuff haha.